In just over a week it will be Thanksgiving, the beginning of the holiday season that ignites a festive spirit of togetherness in all of us. Families will reunite, celebrate their kin and enjoy each other's company. Obviously, there is no better way to kick off this joyous time than with a new apocalyptic disaster film, which director Roland Emmerich saw fit to provide in his latest offering of global suffering, ""2012.""
After blowing up all of the world's biggest landmarks in ""Independence Day"" and turning earth into a global warming-induced Slush Puppie in ""The Day After Tomorrow,"" Emmerich has now turned to Mayan prophecy as a means to bring about catastrophe. ""2012"" shows the destruction of the world as foretold by these ancient people, though it eschews the mystical causes most associate with these predictions.
Instead, ""2012"" provides Chiwetel Ejiofor playing a geologist who discovers something involving neutrinos, microwaves and solar flares that apparently means everybody is doomed. Ejiofor becomes the point man for the president (Danny Glover, who probably would bring on the apocalypse if elected commander in chief) and his chief of staff (Oliver Platt at his douchbaggiest) in an operation to preserve the human species by building high-tech arks. Meanwhile, a struggling author and estranged father, played by John Cusack, attempts to shepherd his family to safety as the world literally collapses around them.
It's this dual structure of ""2012"" that creates some of its biggest problems. Neither storyline is particularly interesting, as both are bogged down by cliché after cliché. But at least Cusack, one of the more underappreciated actors working today, amps up the camp in his performance as much as he can to make things watchable. The story even becomes legitimately entertaining when Woody Harrelson enters the picture as a hillbilly conspiracy theorist who stumbles upon the conspiracy to hide the apocalypse between sips of Pabst Blue Ribbon. But Harrelson doesn't get nearly enough screen time, and Cusack is pushed to the side for much of ""2012's"" obscene 158-minute runtime.
Especially annoying is the ""science"" Ejiofor keeps mentioning, which serves no purpose in the film. While he may throw out endless geological and astrophysical terms, none of them provide an authentic explanation for why the planet would fall apart like a batch of Legos. (As an aside, Emmerich sadly misses a great opportunity to show the apocalypse's effect on Legoland.)
""2012"" would be several minutes shorter—and much less boring—if it simply concentrated on the trashy fun of seeing Los Angeles collapse into the Pacific as Cusack drives a limo through a skyscraper, rather than trying to explain everything that is going on. On top of this, Emmerich fills much of the movie with supposedly teary goodbyes between family members, yet has no capacity to imbue these scenes with any sort of emotional resonance whatsoever.
Thankfully, when ""2012"" brings on the action, it is so ridiculous that it is impossible not to be entertained. In ""The Day After Tomorrow,"" Emmerich unwittingly crafted one of the most hilarious scenes ever when his cast attempted to run away from cold air. He must have an obsession with people running from atmospheric phenomena, as ""2012"" features characters fleeing a diabolical dust cloud, in addition to earthquakes and a tsunami carrying the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy. The idiocy of these scenes is paramount, but each moment is enthralling at the same time. There are no less than three scenes where an airplane takes off as an earthquake tears apart the runway, and it is never not funny.
In many ways, Roland Emmerich could be the dumber, more idealistic version of Michael Bay. Both fail to produce anything other than mindless orgies of pyrotechnics, but while Bay seems content to create moneymaking blockbuster cash machines, Emmerich appears to be under the impression that he has the next ""Doctor Zhivago"" on his hands with every new project. Which he might, if ""Doctor Zhivago"" involved a colossal volcano appearing in the middle of Moscow and fire began raining from the sky.
Ultimately, there is a lot of stupid fun to be had with ""2012"" if one can get past the added filler. Emmerich may not realize it, but he has a real knack for creating entertaining schlock. ""2012"" can be a truly hilarious (albeit unintentionally) film, and so long as one expects less of the movie than Emmerich does, there is no reason to leave the theater without a wide, self-satisfied grin.
